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Comparison · Analytics
Plotly vs ThingsBoard
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Plotly and ThingsBoard — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Plotly vs ThingsBoard: at a glance
What is Plotly?
Plotly is turning its cloud into a metered compute platform with an enterprise on-ramp.
Plotly ships on two tracks. Plotly Studio, the desktop AI app-builder, releases every one to two weeks and has spent v0.0.80 through v0.0.86 on credential handling, reasoning transparency, personalization and now the reliability of the agent session engine itself. Plotly Cloud is the louder track: since late May it has added viewer-seat pricing, domain verification, per-app compute modes with credit-metered billing, and customer-owned domains with managed TLS.
What is ThingsBoard?
An IoT platform whose release notes have become a CVE ledger
ThingsBoard ships every release twice — once on the 4.3 line and once as a 4.2 backport with an identical security section — and those security sections now dominate the notes, running to twenty or thirty CVEs per release. The recurring classes are telling: SSRF through AI model provider URLs, SSRF and file access escapes from the TBEL script sandbox, DNS rebinding bypasses, and access control on alarm comments. Feature work continues underneath, mostly IoT Hub integration and an Angular 20 UI migration.
Plotly vs ThingsBoard: editorial side-by-side
Plotly
6.3ANALYTICS
Plotly is turning its cloud into a metered compute platform with an enterprise on-ramp.
◆ Current state
Plotly ships on two tracks. Plotly Studio, the desktop AI app-builder, releases every one to two weeks and has spent v0.0.80 through v0.0.86 on credential handling, reasoning transparency, personalization and now the reliability of the agent session engine itself. Plotly Cloud is the louder track: since late May it has added viewer-seat pricing, domain verification, per-app compute modes with credit-metered billing, and customer-owned domains with managed TLS.
◆ Where it's heading
The Cloud releases are assembling the standard pieces of a hosting business in order — identity first (domain verification, explicitly framed as the step before SSO), then billing (viewer seats, then metered compute credits), and now production-grade serving (custom domains, automatic certificate renewal). Studio is being hardened as the authoring front end that feeds it: Universal Deployment pushed beyond Dash apps, credentials saved once and reused, a Winget channel to widen Windows installs, and in v0.0.86 a rebuilt session engine plus automatic retries so agent runs survive expired tokens. The two tracks converge on one funnel — author in Studio, deploy to Cloud, pay by compute consumed.
◆ Prediction
The Domain Verification entry names SSO as the next step and places it in the Enterprise tier, so single sign-on is the most likely Cloud release next. Studio should hold its one-to-two-week cadence, with the newly added app thumbnails pointing toward more work on browsing and organizing generated apps.
ThingsBoard
0.0ANALYTICS
An IoT platform whose release notes have become a CVE ledger
◆ Current state
ThingsBoard ships every release twice — once on the 4.3 line and once as a 4.2 backport with an identical security section — and those security sections now dominate the notes, running to twenty or thirty CVEs per release. The recurring classes are telling: SSRF through AI model provider URLs, SSRF and file access escapes from the TBEL script sandbox, DNS rebinding bypasses, and access control on alarm comments. Feature work continues underneath, mostly IoT Hub integration and an Angular 20 UI migration.
◆ Where it's heading
The platform is paying down the security cost of being extensible. TBEL scripting and user-configurable AI model endpoints are exactly the features that make ThingsBoard useful for industrial rule engines, and both are repeatedly the source of sandbox and SSRF findings — so the work has shifted to fencing them with allow-lists, opt-in SSRF protection and configurable security headers. Meanwhile the AI surface keeps growing, with structured output support spreading across more model providers.
◆ Prediction
The dual-branch pattern will hold, with 4.2 continuing to receive the same security sets as 4.3 until it reaches end of life; expect further hardening of the TBEL sandbox rather than new scripting capability.
Alternatives to Plotly and ThingsBoard
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Plotly or ThingsBoard.
Omni
Omni ships weekly, and almost every week the headline item is an AI feature.
silx
silx settles into maintenance a release after its PySide6 migration
aniread
aniread stops asking you to know which tracker wrote the file
Rho
Rho's release machinery finally produced a stable build — and it shipped no new product.
Usermaven
Usermaven closed the loop: data comes in from anywhere, and now it goes back out.
See all Plotly alternatives → · See all ThingsBoard alternatives →
Recent activity from Plotly and ThingsBoard
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 15d agoPlotlyCustom Domains in Plotly Cloud ⚡
- 25d agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.85: Breadcrumbs & minor bug fixes
- 1mo agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.84: Faster AI, Saved Credentials, and Winget Support
- 1mo agoPlotlyCompute Modes and App Sizing in Plotly Cloud ⚡
- 1mo agoPlotlyPlotly Studio 0.0.83: Dash Update and macOS Fixes
- 1mo agoThingsBoard4.3.1.3 clears 25+ CVEs and adds IoT Hub integration
- 1mo agoThingsBoard4.2.2.3 backports the full 4.3.1.3 security set
- 2mo agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.82: Override for credential redaction, stability fixes
- 2mo agoThingsBoard4.3.1.2 fences the TBEL sandbox and AI provider URLs against SSRF
- 2mo agoThingsBoard4.2.2.2 backports the TBEL sandbox and SSRF fixes
- 4mo agoThingsBoard4.3.1.1 adds configurable security headers and a rebinding allow-list
- 4mo agoThingsBoard4.2.2.1 backports security headers and CORS configuration
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Plotly and ThingsBoard?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Plotly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Plotly better than ThingsBoard?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Plotly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Plotly?
Top Plotly alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Plotly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/plotly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to ThingsBoard?
Top ThingsBoard alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ThingsBoard alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/thingsboard for the full list with editorial commentary on each.